Editorial | Best democracy money can buy … in secret

If the People’s National Party (PNP) is serious in its willingness to close regulatory loopholes of money in politics – as its general secretary, Dayton Campbell, suggests it is – it can start by complying with the spirit of a simple element of the regime: publishing the party’s annual audited accounts. It is a matter on which the party has regressed after positive steps a dozen years ago.

But it is notable, but hardly surprising, that Dr Campbell found common cause with Horace Chang, his counterpart in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), in erecting ramparts against transparency, especially with respect to who are the big donors to the parties. Dr Chang compounded the insult by suggesting that Jamaicans couldn’t handle such information and that it would only become a source of mischief. He even attempted to make the case that corruption among public officials isn’t a serious problem in Jamaica, but rather, an overhyped, externally driven issue.

In the circumstances, the “independent” members of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) – those who don’t represent the parties – should cause a review of the political party and campaign-finance laws to have them updated ahead of the next general election, in 2025. In the meantime, the ECJ must be robust and transparent in enforcing the existing regulations.

Currently, people can run for political office in Jamaica as either representatives of registered political parties or as independent candidates. From a legislative standpoint, there are two significant reasons for parties to register. The most immediate of these is that it provides a legally structured framework in which to raise money for election campaigns. The other is that when that bit of the law is finally promulgated, political parties will be able to receive state funding (up to 40 per cent of their expenditure of the previous year, but limited by the Government’s budgetary allocation for this) to help pay for their day-to-day operations.

As of now, though, all the general activities of parties as well as their election campaigns are paid for with money they raise from private donors and members. During an election, a party is allowed to spend up to J$630 million on its campaign. But that is not the real cap on the election expenditure. Each of its candidates can separately spend J$15 million. With 63 parliamentary constituencies in Jamaica, that could add another J$945 million in expenditure.

LOT OF MONEY

Conceivably, therefore, a political party and its candidates could, combined, legally spend up to J$1.5 billion on a campaign. That is a lot of money. Indeed, even the J$300 million the JLP said it spent on its COVID-19 affected, scaled-down hustings in 2020 is a substantial amount of money, for which donors and special interests might be inclined to request favours.

That is why parties and candidates are required to file with the ECJ how much money they raise during the “reporting period”. They also have to identify contributors of more than J$250,000. Additionally, individuals and firms that enter into contracts with the Government during the “reporting period”, and up to two years after making the contribution, have to report the fact of the contract to the ECJ.

However, these filings are private to the ECJ. The commission publicly reports broad summaries of the information supplied by the parties and their candidates.

There is a further problem. Unless an election is called earlier, the “reporting period” begins six months before the end of a government’s five-year term. That is a gaping hole in the law.

Donors, for instance, are able to front-load their contributions ahead of the reporting by providing cash and kind in the months ahead of the opening of the reporting window. The upshot: parties and candidates won’t have to account for a chunk of the contributions they receive.

Our view is that in addition to requiring the naming of big donors, the law should require that the filings are done semi-annually (including by sitting candidates and constituency caretakers) and not be limited to a campaign period. Expenditure limits, however, would remain on campaigns. The annual audited financial reports of parties would capture the income that flows to the central organisation.

PRESENT AUDITED ACCOUNTS

Additionally, the law should be amended to make the implicit requirement that the parties present audited accounts at their annual conference an absolute and clear obligation, not something limited to those that “qualify for state funding”. Further, the ECJ should be required to report if and when it receives regulatory filings from the parties, if they are late, and what action it has taken to ensure full and timely compliance with regulations.

These are neither impossible nor difficult things to do if the parties believe in transparency, and Jamaicans should be confident that their democracy is not on the block to special interests or people with the deepest pockets, including some on the periphery of the law.

In 2010, for instance, the PNP published audited financials without naming its donors. The JLP gave a synopsis of theirs. That ought to have been a thrust towards greater transparency. Instead, delegates at the parties’ conferences receive only broad summaries of these documents. Dr Campbell presumes that the party’s voters would flee if people knew who they were. We believe him to be wrong. People, as other efforts at transparency have shown, quickly adjust.

The JLP’s Dr Chang is even more deeply in the thickets on this matter. He admits to “some level of corruption” in Jamaica but says it has “nothing to do with politics”, but rather, over-regulation. He appears to assume that transparency is a foreign imposition that would be open to misuse, misinterpretation, and for the maligning of people who contribute to political parties. Which, of course, displays a distrust and lack of confidence in the ability of Jamaicans to have rational views on issues.

The bottom line: the opaque arrangements fuel distrust. Transparency doesn’t have to wait until the state funds elections.